Nicaragua

Dear Friends

Envío team

It has been an incredibly active month here in Nicaragua; one in which many of the events that have taken place give us serious cause for concern.

There has been a massive anti-malaria campaign in the country this month. Thousands of volunteers have participated in carrying out the program, developed by the World Health Organization, which hopes to drastically reduce the incidence of malaria here. The cooperation throughout the country was excellent and we are all hopeful that the coming months will prove the success of the campaign.

“Halcón Vista”, the U.S. – Honduran joint military maneuvers on the Honduran coast, which took place the first part of October, was the focal point of massive nation-wide protests during the maneuvers and afterwards. Many of us attended the various manifestations and demonstrations. Even though the demonstrations were decidedly anti-imperialist and anti-interventionist, at no time did any of us here feel that the strong feelings were directed toward the American people, but rather toward the policies of the Reagan administration. This is contrary to the statements generated by the U.S. Embassy here in Managua in which they indicated that they had planes ready to evacuate American personnel because they feared an action against the embassy. That stories are circulated by the communications media in the United States as if they were true, we find very dangerous.

The conference at Cancun at the end of October was an event which generated a great deal of speculation and analysis here. We are including some reflections on this conference by Mexican and Nicaraguan government officials.

Nicaraguans were very proud of the speech delivered by Comandante Daniel Ortega at the U.N. in which he presented, on behalf of the FDR-FMLN, a plan for peaceful negotiations to end the conflict in El Salvador. The reply by Mr. Adelman, one of the assistant representatives for the U.S. at the United Nations, was insulting as well as a distortion of the reality of what is going on in Nicaragua now.

The arrest and trial of the COSEP and CAUS members has caused world attention. COSEP is the private enterprise association here in Nicaragua, an association that has taken a strong anti-government position. CAUS is the union which is associated with the communist party here. It is a small and relatively insignificant party, except in some factories where it has caused serious labor problems. The communists here have never recognized the Sandinista victory as a true revolution and have called it a “bourgeoisie reformist revolution”. They have called for a “true” workers’ revolution and takeover of power. So while COSEP accuses the government of being completely a Marxist-Leninist totalitarian dictatorship, CAUS accuses it of selling out to imperialist interests. We have included an article on these events.

Recent events in the U.S. have been a source of alarm for all of us. The rash of articles in the U.S. press attack with a vengeance the Nicaraguan government and present charges which are totally unsubstantiated but repeated by our government officials as true. The clearest example of this is the story that 500 Cuban special forces slipped into Nicaragua as tourists (which seems a little improbable to those who have been at the Managua airport), trained in the jungle for one month and then proceeded to El Salvador where they blew up the Puente de Oro Bridge. Now we hear that there are thousands of Vietnamese soldiers and 1,000 Vietnamese planes here. Many times the stories seem so absurd that we do not bother to respond, only to find out that they are being accepted in other parts of the world.

The meeting of the Armies of the Americans in Washington pointedly excluded Nicaragua, even though it belongs to all of the regional organizations, including the Organization of American States. Just prior, officials of El Salvador and Guatemala had made affirmations about the formation of the “Northern Triangle” which would combine the forces of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to fight the guerrillas in El Salvador and in “other areas”. The subsequent statements by Secretary of State Haig about “strangling” Cuba and Nicaragua and not ruling out military intervention increased the apprehension.

As all of these ominous things hang over our heads here, we plan the commemoration of the first anniversary of the deaths of the four American women in El Salvador last December 2. A year has passed, there has been no resolution of the case by the Salvadoran authorities and what is even sadder, the country continues to be wracked by violence supported by the United States. Just this week Ohio congressperson Mary Rose Oakar gave serious evidence of the implication of Coronel Guillermo García, El Salvador Defense Minister, in the women’s deaths. He is presently in the U.S. asking the U.S. to impose a blockade against Nicaragua and to increase military aid to his government. Figures announced this week by Legal Aid of El Salvador say that 11,000 non-combatants have died in the first nine months of this year.

The horrors that are going on in El Salvador and that are increasing daily in Guatemala create the situation of growing numbers of refugees in so many countries of the Americas. We take a special look at their plight in this issue. We look at the refugees in Nicaragua, their life here, their feeling, hopes and dreams for a future that they hope will be better than that which they have known.

We want to thank all of you who have written to us and ask you to keep us informed on how we may help you in your work.

In solidarity,
The Staff

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